Home.
Your roots,
your foundation.
No matter the wind that batters,
nor the storms that have shaken,
nothing,
not even time,
from your memory and heart,
can it be taken.

I think of myself as a garden. I think of all of us as gardens. We are born to caretakers and gardeners that we are trusted to. Some do well, some are works in progress, some are lost…some of us are planted in extremes of conditions that make growth difficult, some of us are born into luxury with all the latest farming equipment at the disposal of those who chose to plant us…. everyone’s process is imperfect and blemished … but perfect and beautiful…ALL IN THE SAME BREATH.

When I think of myself as a literal garden, I think of a little girl, a soul that was once nothing more than a seed inside my mother. Who was once a seed inside her mother, who was once a seed inside my great grandma Goodhart. And just a sliver of light in my father’s eye, a single star among the galaxies that sparkle when he smiles…

I was born with a red-headed spitfire of an older brother …We were a family, living in a Nielsen Bermuda-Triangle of a plot of land on Pilot Point Rd, in Eglon Washington next to the bald eagle tree, struck by lightning before I was born, where the eagles would often perch three at a time to enjoy the panoramic view of the Puget Sound, from Baker to Rainier, and the stenciled skyline of Seattle skyscrapers off in the distance…

I remember growing up, those first years my brother and I sharing a hide-a-bed in a cabin too small for a family of four, staring at night across the Puget Sound, where the moonlight would create diamonds on the water, and I would ponder at the lights on the other-side, where the city lied, and the lives they were illuminating. They reminded me of ever-lit Christmas lights. I remember when I felt my most alone, going to that piece of property, next to the trail-head that led steeply down the two hundred foot high bank waterfront property we lived on, the lights on the other side would remind me I WASN’T ALONE.